Claire Stansfield, co-founder of the high-end T-shirt company C&C California, bought a traditional English country-style house in the Hollywood Hills and set out to remodel it for her family.

The project was a delicate balancing act: Keep the traditional elegance, but update it for a modern family. Keep the coziness, but open up the floor plan. Stansfield and her husband, Speaks, owner of Hollywood club Den, called in the architecture firm Marmol Radziner to update the 1920 Robert Byrd-designed house. Today the exterior looks much as it always has. Even the trumpet vine survived the renovation, completed in 2008. But inside, visitors are greeted with some surprises ...

The traditional exterior yields to a modern great room with soaring ceilings, a dark walnut floor and tons of natural light. By taking down walls in the center of the house, the family got a huge free-flowing living area while retaining snug bedrooms for boys Lucky, 4, and Rocco, 2.

Stansfield wanted a new framework to give her decorating flexibility — an environment where she could display her mother's fancy Limoges china one day and earthy Heath pottery the next, depending on her mood.

"With fashion and with interior design, you can get into a situation where you love something for five years ago, and suddenly you can't stand it," says Stansfield, 45.

"I love midcentury, but, oh my gosh, when you get the furniture and everything in that style, then what do you do if your tastes change? Or if someone gives you a gorgeous china teapot? Throw it out because it doesn't go with your Neutra house? It's so important to keep your options open."

Marmol-Radziner lined the great room with built-in bookcases, reached by library ladder, adding warmth to the large open room. Above Stansfield is a pass-through connecting the second floor to the great room. "We want to be able to breathe in a house, not feel cramped," she says. "And we also want to be able to see, or at least hear, our boys from every room in the house. We knew we wanted a great room, but at the same time, we didn't want to lose this sense of country-house charm."

The home office includes a station where kids can draw or play games.

Back in the great room, the new Sub-Zero refrigerator tucks nicely into the casework.

Above, two steel beams that now run the width of the great room. When she bought the house, Stansfield says it was a warren of small rooms. Marmol-Radziner knocked out walls and added the beams to "basically prevent the house from caving in on itself," Stansfield says.

The other half of the great room: The kitchen island and bar chairs sit in the foreground, at right, and the dining table is at left. Stairs lead to bedrooms. Abundant cabinetry houses Stansfield's collections of plates and glassware.

In the dining area, Stansfield designed the table to reference the traditional and modern elements of the house. Working with fellow design consultant Channon Roe, they created a piece with wooden farm tables and a zinc top. "A wooden table would have been too much wood in this room," Stansfield says. "That's why I went with wicker chairs, too. They've got a country aspect to them, but with the zinc, it keeps a nice balance."

Visitors will find a wink here and there. In the powder room, she papered the walls with what looks like traditional toile. From far away, it looks like a bucolic country scene; up close, the scenes depict urban crime. "People come out of that bathroom with a smile on their face," she says. "I love that. That pattern came in three colors; I of course went for the earth-toned one."

The master bedroom, bathed in natural light. Stansfield says she keeps her decorating options open by maintaining a neutral palette. "I love a woman who can paint a room red, I'm just not one of them," she says.

Host of The Insider, Lara Spencer. I don't like this at all, it seems really generic and impersonal.

Lara Spencer's home: Made for the modern family

Lara Spencer and David Haffenreffer traded more than time zones last year when they moved from Greenwich, Conn., to Beverly Hills. They crossed architectural decades. Spencer, host of "The Insider" celebrity news show on CBS, and her husband, a former CNN anchor, left behind a bucolic 1901 carriage house and adopted furniture, art and accessories for the 1960s California home they bought for themselves, daughter Kate, and son Duff, pictured here with Spencer.

Six months of renovations behind them, the couple settled into a fresh mix of Hollywood Regency, midcentury modern and contemporary casual, all modified for family life. The house spoke largely through two original features: its metallic-flecked gray terrazzo floors, which had been hidden under old shag carpeting, and its rotunda. Spencer covered the rotunda's walls with silver-threaded grass cloth. "I call the rotunda the nerve center of the house," she says. "It has five openings, so you can stand here and see into the dining room, living room and family room — and outdoors."

At the center of frame: A Jonathan Adler vase filled with peacock feathers and perched on a mirrored pedestal.

Spencer replaced the rotunda's debris-filled skylight with a glass clerestory. The light fixture is from Misomod.

A cool platinum and white palette links the first floor rooms and plays off the refinished terrazzo floor. The living room's pops of brilliance come from acid green, aqua and fuchsia accessories, including an area rug from the Rug Co. a pair of turquoise thrift store lamps and a 1960s cityscape rendered in chartreuse and black that she picked up for $200 on the This Is Not Ikea website.

To replace the shag carpeting, Spencer and Haffenreffer chose dark bamboo flooring because it's a sustainable material and it contrasts with the light walls, glass and terrazzo. The Arco lamp in foreground was found on EBay; reproductions are available at Design Within Reach. The new Arne Jacobsen Egg chair is from DWR, and the sofa is from Room Service in Los Angeles. Spencer found the vintage chrome and Lucite coffee table base at a flea market and had a glass top cut for $100.

More pop comes in the form of art by Todd Goldman, a Los Angeles painter whose retro-cartoon canvases Spencer describes as "a little naughty." The Goldman painting in the living room reads: "Gold digger: like a hooker, just smarter." That artwork hangs next to a split-level staircase that leads up to three bedrooms and down to a playroom. Spencer and Haffenreffer replaced the staircase wall with vertical bars to make the room feel larger. Note the light fixture above the stairs, peeking through the opening in the wall.

That light in the stairwell is a vintage Sputnik lamp from Room Service, which has stores in Los Angeles and Newport Beach. Spencer says lighting is the "jewelry" that finishes a space -- "a fun way to make a big statement." Among her other sources for authentic period lighting or retro-style reproductions: Interior Illusions in West Hollywood and Blueprint in Los Angeles. Spencer also shops the websites Misomod and 1stdibs.com.

Before the remodel: The split-level, 4,000-square-foot home was had been destined for the wrecking ball, Spencer says. "It had been in and out of escrow three times during the year we were house-hunting, and the buyer before us was planning to rip it down." She and Haffenreffer saw beyond the dark paneling, the shag carpeting and the heavy curtains. "It was packed with junk, but I could tell this house had great flow and potential," she says.

In this "before" photo, sections of wall on both sides of the fireplace separated the family room from the living room on the other side. Spencer and Haffenreffer knocked out those partitions to create …

… a free-flowing space. New quartzite stone clads the original two-sided fireplace. With the partitions gone, the family room here is better connected to the living room. Much of the furniture, lighting and accessories are round, including a C-shaped sectional sofa upholstered in faux ostrich.

Spencer grew up poking around suburban New York's flea markets and yard sales with her mother, learning how to spot a diamond in the rough and how to get an expensive look for less. Her personal interest in furniture and collectibles took a professional turn in 2002, when while working as a "Good Morning America" correspondent she landed a second gig as host of "Antiques Roadshow." Her three-year relationship with the popular PBS program gave her a crash- course in design and decorative arts. In March she heads to the Rose Bowl Flea Market to shoot the pilot for "Fleaflip," which she created with Merv Griffin Productions for the Game Show Network. The show pits teams competing to discover and repurpose the best buys — a concept that Spencer says was inspired by her passion for "the hunt."

Seen from the family room, the two-sided fireplace frames the living room on the other side.

This view looks back toward the rotunda, with the living room on the left, the family room in the foreground and the bar to the far right.

As part of the bar's renovations, Spencer wrapped the front with patterned mirrored panels found at a vintage shop in Palm Springs. A set of four chrome and white leather bar stools completes the space. The back wall was knocked out, connecting to main living areas to the once-hidden dining room in back.

To glam up the dining room, Spencer playfully paired a vintage Eero Saarinen Tulip marble pedestal table with 1960s polished aluminum Russell Woodard patio chairs and Rose Bowl Flea Market ottomans that Lara had recovered in hot pink mohair. The Parsons table is from CB2; the rug is from the Rug Co.

Duff and Kate use the dining table for homework and playing at the computer. Spencer found the chandelier -- strings of glass balls -- at Interior Illusions. The mirror is from Z Gallerie. The 1960s chrome sconces on both sides are from 1stdibs.com.

Spencer played with glossy finishes she never used in her previous home. The Mylar-backed peacock wallpaper from Walnut Wallpaper in Los Angeles is fun and groovy, Spencer says. "It's so over-the-top 1960s."

In the powder room, sconces match the chandelier in the dining room and also were from Interior Illusions. Spencer found the overhead light -- a 1960s Murano smoked glass fixture -- on EBay for $600. The diamond-shaped mirror is a flea-market find.

Upstairs, the serene master suite carries a muted version of the first floor's palette. The bedroom is on an elegantly- piped headboard upholstered in platinum gray. The piece came across the country from the couple's previous home in Connecticut, where it had been covered in a dark paisley pattern.

"It was the 104th house we saw," Haffenreffer says of the residence, whose long, horizontal lines rise above a swimming pool with uninterrupted views to the west. Spencer found the faux bamboo chairs at a flea market and painted them chartreuse; the Russell Woodard outdoor table was scored off EBay. The couple worked with landscape designer Andrea Scharff to renovate their garden and pool area. A small lawn in the distance ends in steps leading down to another level of the yard.

Dogs Dandy and Harry walk with Spencer down floating steps leading to the fire pit. The lower patio is furnished with retro-style split-rattan chairs upholstered in a Trina Turk-designed indoor-outdoor fabric manufactured by Schumacher.